The question is will it be a housing crash, with prices dropping 20% or more and the impact carrying over to start an overall recession. Or is it more in the vein of the ups and downs of the housing market.
This is not a report I normally use, but it just appeared in my regular headline search of business and investing news. I am as I said a little suprised with this data, in that it doesn't show some drop in pricing. I would be very interested in other data, of course.
There is some spiral causation here: Reports that sales prices still edging up will reinforce a seller's judgement that low offers should be rejected, which in turn will bias the statistics upward. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
But a housing crash, is a step beyond a slowdown. Some people are in a position where they don't have to sell, in a housing slowdown, and they just take their house off the market. So unit sales drop, but prices don't. A housing crash lasts longer, and eventually people have to sell, and to sell they have to lower their price. I've been in housing crashes, and condo prices fall 30--40%, while home prices fall 20--25%. And it's possible that this still may turn into the housing crash that Jerome and others have been predicting. I'm just surprised that this far into the slowdown, that we haven't seen even a dip in housing prices. So this enforces my belief that we are not going to have a "crash", but simply a "slowdown", and perhaps a milder slowdown than I, with my optimistic outlook, would have thought. and no housing led recession.
Also regarding (1), a striking graph (thumbnail):
Regarding (2), an example of a crashless end to a comparable situation would be interesting. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
would you expect the UK and US housing markets to behave differently?
It's odd that the graphs compare UK means to US medians. The U.S. National Association of Realtors no doubt prefers the appearance of graphs that use the median. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
